Smiles greeted Clayton's announcement as he rose from the table.
Ganged up on by his family, Clayton drove away from home feeling a bit put out. Not at Grace and the kids, but with his mother. Why the change of heart? She'd never wanted him to know his father, and now it was suddenly okay for Kerney to be treated like a grandfather. What was that all about?
He consulted the map Rojas had given him, told dispatch he was in service and where he was going, and made his way up the forest road into the mountains until a locked gate stopped him. He got out, climbed the gate, and walked the steep, curving road. At the last bend a large log cabin with a covered porch came into view.
It was one of those modern cabins made from precut logs, with a pitched green metal roof and two stone chimneys at either end of the building. The cabin sat on an elevated stone foundation overlooking a small meadow and a frozen streambed that meandered out of a narrow mountain ravine. Large windows gave a view of the forest beyond the meadow and the white-capped Sierra Blanca peaks in the distance.
Clayton gauged the size of the cabin and decided it was at least four thousand square feet, minus the covered porch with the redwood railing and massive hand-cut stone steps. It was way more than twice the size of his house in Mescalero.
Yesterday's light snowfall in Ruidoso had left two inches on a deep bed of frozen snow in the mountains. It was the first precipitation since the Ulibarri murder. Clayton scanned the area for more cabins hidden in the trees and saw none. On the north side of the road, where the sun couldn't reach, he knelt and carefully brushed away the fresh snow looking for tire tracks on the hard-packed ice. The last vehicle driven over the frozen surface had tires much wider than a car, pickup truck, or SUV.
He tried several more places with the same results and switched to the south side, brushing a channel across the width of the roadway. Again, only the very wide treads of a heavy vehicle showed.
Clayton stood in the driveway and studied the cabin, wondering if it was the private retreat where Harry Staggs's fictitious Johnny Jackson provided female companionship for important, well-known men.
He decided that if Rojas was the pimp who provided girls for VIPs, he certainly wouldn't have given him a map to the place. The windows were shuttered on the inside so Clayton couldn't get a look. But from all appearances, it seemed to be just a rich man's vacation lodge.
Rojas's girlfriend had mentioned taking several hikes during her stay at the cabin, so at the front porch steps Clayton brushed away the snow, looking for any telltale remnants of boot prints. He did the same at the back door, at a trail head next to a covered wood pile that wandered into the forest, and on the front porch around an expensive hot tub where wind-blown snow had collected. There were bobcat and deer tracks in the snow behind the cabin, and old claw marks from a black bear on the trunk of a nearby tree. But Clayton saw no evidence of any recent human activity. Not even the woodpile had been disturbed.
On the side of the house he found more tire indentations that matched what he'd seen on the road, and clear boot tracks in a man's size led to a propane tank lettered with the supplier's name.
He called the company, spoke to the manager, gave his location, and asked when the tank had last been filled. The manager searched his paperwork and came back with a date that matched exactly the time Rojas's girlfriend said she'd been at the cabin.
'Ask the driver if anyone was here when he made his delivery,' Clayton said.
'Let me get him on his cell phone,' the manager said.
Clayton waited patiently and smiled to himself when the manager reported that no one had been at the cabin when his driver had filled the tank. It was exactly what he'd expected to hear.
'I need to take a statement from him,' Clayton said, checking his watch, figuring his travel time back to Ruidoso on the forest road. 'Where can I meet him in the next thirty minutes?'
'Do I have a problem with my driver, Deputy?' the manager asked.
'Not at all,' Clayton said as he walked quickly down the road toward the locked gate.
The man told him where to meet the driver. Clayton disconnected and smiled to himself as he climbed the gate. What was that old saying? Sometimes people were just too smart for their own good.
Detective Pino sat quietly in Sergeant Vialpando's office while he examined the hard-copy printouts from Greer's Internet personal ad and Web site. One shelf of a bookcase held a display of baseball caps from various police departments. On Vialpando's desk was a framed photograph of a large, smiling black dog.
The bull-pen area outside the office was nearly empty. Only two detectives were at their desks. Except for paperwork or court appearances, mornings weren't the busiest times for vice cops.
Vialpando looked up from the copies. 'Compared to a lot of the crap on the Net, this is pretty classy stuff. Some soft-porn poses, no totally nude pictures, good photography, a sexy, narrative come-on that only hints at sex for hire, and a good-looking woman who wouldn't raise any eyebrows if a guy was seen in public with her. I'd say the whole thing was professionally done to appeal to high-end clients.'
'So send her an E-mail and ask her for a date,' Ramona said.
'Not yet, unless you're in a hurry,' Vialpando said. 'We've got reasonable suspicion to believe Greer's a hooker, but no probable cause. I'd rather put surveillance on her for a day or two, document her next date, interrogate her client afterward, and then bust her when she asks me for money. If I can scare her enough, maybe she'll roll over on her pimp.'
'I can wait,' Ramona said. 'Do you think she has a pimp?'
'From what you've told me, Greer is probably new to the game, so I'm betting somebody fronted the money for the Web site. They don't come cheap, and I doubt Greer built it herself.'
'And Thomas Deacon?' Ramona asked.
'You've done me a huge favor identifying him as the photographer. Chances are he makes his bread and butter in the skin trade. He should prove to be a very valuable informant.'
'I get first crack at him,' Ramona said.
'Of course,' Vialpando replied. 'Are you ready for your meeting with Bedlow?'
'I am.'
He gave her a worried look. 'We never send our undercover female vice detectives out alone. Let me put a wire on you, just to be safe. I'll park a block away, record the conversation, and be there in case you need backup.'
Given what Ramona had learned about Sally Greer, it was a good idea. She nodded her concurrence.
Vialpando nodded back, relieved. 'We can meet for an early lunch afterward.' He named the restaurant, a nice but not expensive eatery in the Nob Hill district just east of the university. 'I'll have a lot of questions.'
'About the case?'
'Yeah, but mostly about you,' Jeff said with an easy smile.
Ramona stood and smoothed down her skirt. 'I may have some of my own questions to ask.'
Jeff Vialpando glanced at her legs and said, 'Like what?'
She touched the framed photo of the smiling black mutt. 'I want to know everything about your dog.'
Vialpando laughed.
Ramona turned crisply on her heel to hide the flush on her face. 'Let's get me wired,' she said, as if she weren't already buzzing with the small jolt of electricity that had passed between them.
Yesterday's MRI test and his prior commitment to teach a late-afternoon class at the law-enforcement academy had left Kerney with no time to follow up on state senator Tyler Norvell. On his desk he found a file from Sal Molina with an attached note indicating that Detective Pino was still in Albuquerque and hadn't yet reported in.
Molina's public-records check on Belinda Louise Nieto had uncovered some fascinating information. Colorado court records showed that soon after the death of her father, Nieto legally changed her name to Crystal Fox. One year later she became a murder victim in an unsolved homicide still carried as an open case by the Denver Police Department.
Kerney read the investigative narrative provided by the Denver PD. The murder had occurred in the victim's car outside a trendy city nightspot. She'd been shot once in the chest by a small-caliber handgun. Analysis of the powder burns and flash points on the woman's clothing disclosed that the barrel of the weapon had been placed in direct contact with the victim's body.
Witnesses at the nightclub reported that the victim had been in the company of a well-dressed, Hispanic male, approximately thirty years old, of average to slightly above average height. None of the patrons or employees at the club recalled previously seeing the couple, who had arrived at the club separately. The detective noted that
